A man whose outlook on life had been broader than Newt's, and whose brain did not receive constant poisoning from within, would have softened that fall and winter, because a new influence was working upon him.

The influence was Minerva, and the boy found himself, as the splendid fall died swiftly into the unspeakable desolation of a mountain winter, counting the days between her visits to the cabin. But of this he said nothing, and the only evidences he gave to her at first were mute evidences, and a greater ferocity in suppressing the spirit of nagging and persecution to which his mother and sister drifted with inevitable perversity. When the girl returned at Christmas, after a longer absence than usual, she found, to her astonishment, the contour of the cabin altered. Newt had thrown against one end an additional room. It was a simple annex of hewn logs and puncheon floor with a clay-daubed chimney and no windows, but it was tight-chinked and solidly weather-tight. When she asked about it, her step-mother sniffed contemptuously that it was some of "Newty's foolishness." Later, when the boy himself came in and saw her sitting with the family circle before the fire in the main cabin, he shuffled his feet clumsily, and seemed unwilling to meet her eyes. A great embarrassment was on him and he was more diffident in her presence than he had ever been before. The girl saw it and wondered, and, when she could do so without attracting too much attention, she found an opportunity to lead him outside.

"M'nervy," the boy said shortly, when they were alone, "sence ye've been a-consortin' with them-thar fotched-on teachers at the school, hit seems like ye hain't got much use fer us plain folks. I reckon ye're right-smart ashamed ter acknowledge ter them folks who yore kin air."

"Oh, Newty!" she exclaimed, with a world of surprise and reproach in her voice. Her face flamed hotly; for, to the mountain idea, disloyalty to "kith and kin" is the most unpardonable of offenses. It was the first time she had ever called him Newty. They were standing out in the icy air of the door-yard.

Inside the main cabin, the family huddled before the fire, as uncommunicative as cattle. The pall of the black squalor had been tightening about the girl's heart like an impalpable constrictor and almost strangling it. Outside, the bitter wind lashed her calico skirt about her slim ankles, and cut like a knife. The boy, who wore no overcoat, stamped his feet, and thrust his chapped and reddened hands into his threadbare pockets.

"Oh, Newty," she expostulated again indignantly, "I thought ye knew me better then ter accuse me of bein' ashamed of my own folks!"

"They hain't your'n," snorted the lad in a queer, hard voice. "Thet is, none of 'em hain't your'n barrin' yore pap. I hain't sayin' nothin' 'gainst Clem ter ye, cause ye're his gal; but the rest on 'em is my folks and I reckon I kin say what I likes. I hain't never had a friend in this house twell ye came hyar. I've sot in thar night atter night an' listened at thet old man a-ravin' an' a cussin' twell, ef he wasn't my great-gran'pap, I'd hev choked him. I hear'n them women folks a-pickin' on ye an' a pesterin' ye, an' I knows ye'd shake the dirt of this place offen yore feet an' quit hit for good, ef hit warn't thet ye 'lows they needs ye. Ye had ought ter do hit, M'nervy. Nobody wouldn't blame ye."

The girl shook her head. The moon had peeped over the shoulder of a sugar-loaf peak, and flooded the world in cobalt. The stark sycamores along the creek-bank rose gaunt and gray, and the ragged picket fence and stile and barn were black etchings against the frosted hills. On the boy's face the silver light showed a tracery of bitterness and weariness. To Minerva it ceased to be the face of an ex-convict and a vindictive criminal. It was only the rather thin and wizened visage of a prematurely aged boy, who had, in his wild-animal sort of way, undertaken to be her champion. He had undertaken it much as the dog with a name for ferocity might indicate its devotion to someone whose hand had not been afraid to caress its unlovely muzzle. She impulsively stretched out her hand and laid it on his coat-sleeve, and his arm shook, not alone with the cold, but with a strange new agitation under a touch of kindness.

"Newty," she said softly, "why don't you shake the dirt of this place offen your feet?" Her talk mixed up strangely mountain vernacular and the more correct form of speech which they had striven to teach her, at the school.

Newt only looked at her with a short laugh.

"Whar'd I go?" he demanded fiercely. "What do I know? What could I do? This is whar I b'longs." With a contemptuous jerk of his head toward the cabin, he added: "Them's my kind o' folks. I was born amongst 'em, an' I hain't been nowhars else except ther penitentiary."

It was on the point of her tongue to remind him that he had been to school; that he could read and write, and was young and strong, and that all the world lay open to him, but she waited. If she was to influence him, she must go slowly and guardedly. So, instead, she asked a question about the thing of which he had wanted to speak and concerning which he found himself suddenly tongue-tied.

"What's the new room, Newty?" she demanded.

"Oh, hell!" ejaculated the boy with a sudden rush of color that even the moonlight failed to hide. "Damned ef I didn't plumb fergit hit!" That was a lie, for he had not forgotten, only he had been too bashful to speak. Now he led her over and opened the door.

A fire was roaring inside on the hearth. The place was unfurnished except for a chair, a bed and a table, all home-made, but all clean and soundly carpentered. In the Frankfort prison, Newt had worked in the chair-factory.

"Ye see, M'nervy," he went on, floundering for words, "ye see, I hain't had nothin' much ter do round hyar, an' I thought hit mout kill some time ter sort of build this-hyar contraption. I 'lowed ye mout be a little more satisfied ef ye had a room of yore own, whar ye could go to, an' put ther bar acrost the door, when them women folks pestered ye, an' tell 'em ter go ter hell."

As the girl looked about the place—all her own—tears came welling to her eyes. How could this boy—more nearly a wild beast than any other human creature she had ever known—have had the delicacy to understand that longing for privacy and self-withdrawal which at times had almost maddened her with its intensity? She sank down in the one chair and sat with the flames playing on her face and lighting the tears that flowed noiselessly, and, when she looked up to thank her champion, he was gazing down on her with a face set in a mask-like tautness,—less it betray emotion of which he was ashamed.

But he had not missed the tears in her eyes and he knew that his humble service had moved her. Suddenly he knew something else. It was not only because she had been less unpleasant than the other members of the household that he had missed her when she went away and had looked forward to her home-coming. He had set up his shrine to hatred of mankind. His experience had taught him much of enmity and little of love. He knew in an impersonal fashion that men had sweethearts and went "sparking" with girls, but for all this sort of thing he had retained in his young manhood the same sort of contempt which most boys pass through and out-grow in earlier life.

Now, he stood there before the roar of the fire on the hearth that he had built and watched the shadows retreat into the corners of the room. He saw Minerva sitting with her eyes still pensive and her lips still smiling, and the flames awakening soft color on her cheeks and mahogany glints in her hair.

She was beautiful. To a more discerning eye that would have long ago been apparent, but until now beauty had meant nothing to Newt Spooner. It had not existed.

So, with the stunning effect of light breaking on eyes that have been sightless, the young man in the frayed and drab homespun, whose brain had been even more colorless and somber than his clothes, felt a wild hunger to take her in his arms and claim her for his own. That this thing had been growing in his mind, unrealized until this moment, he did not suspect. That it was much less sudden than it seemed, he did not understand. He knew only that he, Newt Spooner, vassal to hate, was now in love, and, as he acknowledged it to himself, his face became drawn and pale, and his hands clenched themselves, for with the self-confession came utter despair.

She sat there in the chair he had made, by the hearth he had reared, in the room he had built—and the work had been that of a good craftsman because they had compelled him to learn in the penitentiary. Outside the winds were screaming about the roof-slabs he had nailed down. She was so close that he could put out his hand and touch her—and because now he wanted her beyond everything, even beyond the life of the man who had ruined his life, it was terribly clear that she could never be close to him except in such physical proximity as that of this moment.

The ex-convict was not accustomed to thought. In its stead, he had substituted brooding. Thought is hard and tinged with torture for the brain that has not been reflective. Yet now he must think.

Minerva had been to the college. She yearned for even a greater degree of education. He had built this room because he understood how she shrank from the squalid and unclean life of the mountain cabin—and in all the mountains was no more squalid creature than himself. She despised the idea of blood-reprisal, and to forego that would, by his standards, mean a baser surrender than for a priest to repudiate his cloth.

He was ignorant, penniless, vindictive. She was, to his thinking, learned, fastidious and pledged to the new "fotched-on" order.

Should he tell her that he loved her, provided he could imagine his stoic lips shaping such phrases, she could only be offended and distressed. He must not tell her. That one thing seemed certain, and, as he stood there, masking the storm in his thin breast under a scowling visage of tightly compressed lips and drawn brow, he was being racked by a yearning greater than he had ever known or imagined.

How long he remained rigid and silent he did not know, but at last he heard her voice, speaking very softly:

"Newty, you have been very good to me. You did all this for me—and yet even you don't know how much it means to me."

"Hit warn't nothin'," he answered in a dead voice. Then, having resolved not to betray himself, he found himself crying out to his own surprise, in a tumult of fierce and passionate feeling: "I'd go plumb down inter hell, fer ye, M'nervy."

The girl looked up, then she rose unsteadily, and laid a hand on his arm. Her eyes were gazing very fixedly into his, and she spoke eagerly:

"You say you'd do that—for me. Do something else, Newty. Come—out of a life that's not much better than hell—for me."

He spoke quietly again, though under her finger-touch his arm shook as if it were suddenly palsied:

"I don't jest plumb understand ye."

"Give it all up, Newty." She was talking excitedly, and her words came fast. "Give up this idea of vengeance. It's all wrong and mistaken—and wicked. It hurts you most of all. You said out there to-night that this was the only life you ever knew—"

"This an' ther penitenshery," he corrected her; and a harsh note stole into the words as he uttered them.

"There are other lives you can know. Can't you forego this idea of vengeance? Can't you forget it?"

The man gave a short and hollow laugh.

"I reckon so," he answered. Then, as his eyes flashed wildly, his utterance rose and snapped out the remainder of his response. "When Henry Falkins is dead an' buried—damn him!"

Minerva stood looking into the face that was close to her own. It was a face branded and stamped with so fierce a vindictiveness that she realized the hopelessness of argument. It would have been as easy to persuade a maniac to become sane by asking him to lay aside his lunacy. She turned and dropped into her chair, then, looking straight ahead at the blazing logs, she went on, holding her voice steady and even:

"When you were in jail, Newty—at Jackson—I tried to see you. But they—they wouldn't let me."

The bitterness left his eyes, and he bent suddenly forward.

"Ye tried ter see me—in ther jail-house? What fer did ye do thet?"

"I wanted to tell you, I was sorry—and to beg you to give up—your idea. I didn't know until that day that you were nursing a grudge—against Mr. Falkins."

For a while, Newt stood silent. Finally, he said curtly:

"I'm obleeged ter ye."

"But that isn't all, Newt." Minerva's hands were clasped in her lap, and the fingers twined themselves nervously and tightened as she went on. "I've got to tell you all of it. I heard that morning—what you aimed to do—and I went to Jackson—to warn him."

The mountaineer drew back, and over his pale face passed a paroxysm of bitterness, which at first left him wordless. His posture grew rigid, and, if Minerva Rawlins had been capable of physical fear, she would have felt it then, because she was looking into eyes burning with the fire of mono-mania. But, at last, he spoke in the same dead voice, and only to ask a question:

"How did ye know? Who betrayed me?"

"I can't tell you that. I knew that, if you succeeded, you would ruin your life—as well as end his. You are bound to see sometime that all this idea of a man's being his own judge and jury and executioner is wicked, and then—if you had succeeded—" She raised her hands in a despairing gesture, and broke off.

Once more the boy had become stiff in his attitude, and his face seemed a gargoyle of hatred.

"Ef I'm goin' ter be so plumb miserable erbout hit," he said slowly, "I mout as well suffer fer a couple as fer one. Who war hit thet betrayed me?"

Minerva shook her head.

"You think of Henry Falkins as your bitter enemy. He isn't, Newt. He's not any man's enemy. Only he has lived in the civilized world as well as here, and he knows that a system that's built on murder is wrong. You know only the Henry Falkins that you've imagined. I know how terrible it must have been down there—at Frankfort.... I know that you had little else to think about.... But just for that very reason you can't trust the ideas that came to you down there. The real Henry Falkins isn't the man you think."

Newt Spooner took two slow steps, and stood before her. As he half-turned, the fire fell on one side of his face, gleaming yellow and vermilion on the gaunt angle of his jaw and chin, and kindling the other and more baleful fire in his pupils. He talked in a monotone, and, as he talked, the girl seemed to see a spirit dying in darkness and confinement, as a potted plant might die in a cellar.

"Ye says I didn't hev nothin' ter do down thar in ther peniten'shery but ter study over false notions. Mebby ye're right, but I've done studied hit all out—an' I've got 'em settled. I reckon ye hain't got no proper idee of what a feller gits down thar in them damned stone walls, with stripes on his clothes an' no decent air ter breathe an' no water ter drink outen a runnin' spring-branch. Hev ye ever tried ter raise a young hawk in a bird-cage, an' watched hit sicken an' die? They aims ter reform fellers down thar. Well, jest watch an' see how good they've reformed me." It was the longest speech she had ever heard him make, but he was not through yet, and she did not interrupt. "Who sent me thar? This Henry Falkins thet ye're braggin' about. Why did he do hit? Out of the sneekin' meanness of his heart. War I ther fust feller hyar-abouts thet ever kilt anybody? Why didn't ther rest of 'em go down thar? Hit war because I war a kid thet didn't know no better then ter do what I war bid, an' because them what bid me didn't stand behind me." He paused and wiped his forehead on his coat-sleeve. "I didn't 'low thet thar war anybody in ther world a feller could trust. Then I came back hyar. I found my pappy dead, an' my ma married ergin, an' my rifle-gun sold.... Then—" His words ended in a sort of wretched gasp.

"Then you came hyar. I reckon I'd ought to hev knowed better by this time then ter be beguiled, but I 'lowed I could trust you. Ye war ther one body in ther world I'd 'a' swore by ... an' ye rid over thar an' warned him, an' hed me throwed inter ther jail-house."

He drew his shoulders back and turned slowly, starting toward the door; but, with his hand on the latch, he paused, and added with cold bitterness:

"Ye've done succeeded in a-balkin' me oncet, M'nervy; but ye've done 'complished another thing besides thet. I only aimed ter kill Henry Falkins oncet, but atter what ye've told me, ef thar war a way under God's sun ter do hit—I'd kill him twicet."

The girl rose and came over, and her hands fell on the boy's arm.

"Newty," she pleaded with tears of desperation in her eyes. "Newty, you must try to understand me. It was for you as much as for him. It would have ruined your life. Besides, you misunderstand him—"

The young man shook her hands roughly away.

"I reckon my life's done been ruint a'ready," he declared. Then, with an up-leaping voice, he demanded as he fiercely caught her fore-arms in an iron grasp: "Ye says I don't understand Henry Falkins. What does ye know about him beyond what I knows?" The jealousy that rang through the question was the only declaration of love he had ever made to her, and his fingers unconsciously bit into her arms until they ached.

"He came down to the school," she said faintly, "and he gave me this medal because I had—I had tried to study hard."

She had succeeded in withdrawing her hands, and groped at her throat for the small metal disc, which she held out to him. But he drew back, his eyes gleaming venomously.

"I'd ruther tech a rattle-snake," he declared in a voice which she hardly recognized, "then ter lay hands on anything thet damned dog hed teched." She stood dazed, and he went on in the high-timbered shrillness of excitement: "Some day I'm a-goin' to have a reckonin' with thet feller, an', when I gits through, he won't go roun' givin' medals to no other gals." He wheeled and stamped out of the room, and the girl did not know that for hours he tramped the snowy woods of the mountainsides, cursing under his breath, and redoubling his oath of reprisal.

News from the outside world percolates slowly into the quarantine of the beleaguered hills. A fever that rushes hotly through the arteries of the nation from sea to sea, is hardly a flush to the country that leads its own isolated life. From Washington to 'Frisco, men were gathering at bulletin boards and clinging with hot excitement to the latest word of tidings. In city armories, militiamen were inspecting kits and drilling overtime. The Maine had been blown up in Havana harbor. The war fever was burning thousands into fitful patriotism, but back there in the Cumberland mountains, where men scarcely knew who was President of the United States, life was going more placidly than usual. The war which this country knew most about had waned into a two-years' truce. Less than for two decades was there thought of fighting and blood-letting. One day, Newt met a trader riding a spent mule through the mired roads with a newspaper protruding from his splattered saddle-bags.

"I reckon you soldiers'll get a chance ter sashay out an' show what's in ye now," said the trader with a grin, as though he found the idea highly humorous.

"What does ye mean?" demanded the boy, resting on his grounded rifle and fixing the other with steady, incurious eyes. "Hes the Falkinses busted the truce?"

The trader laughed.

"Wuss then thet. This country's a-goin' ter declare war on Spain." He made the announcement with the superior air of one in touch with large and distant affairs.

"Who's Spain?" Newt Spooner put the question gravely and with no sense of betraying untoward ignorance. In the log school-house years ago he might have been told the answer to that question, but such matters had since then escaped his attention.

"Spain," enlightened the trader, whose geographical ideas had also until recently been vague, "is a country in ther other world—you has to go acrost the ocean ter git thar."

"Who lives thar?" inquired the lad.

"Hit's a country of outlanders."

Newt stood for a moment gazing across the dreary wastes of broken ridges.

"Well," he said calmly, "I reckon we kin go over thar an' lick 'em, ef need be."

But, if the fever came slowly to the hills, it infected the men of the two new companies thoroughly enough when it did come. So far, each organization was drilling in its own territory, and, when the boy thought of Henry Falkins, it was not in connection with the war with Spain, but as the principal enemy in another war. On the lintel of the cabin door was a series of notches cut by his pocket-knife. Each month he added a fresh one at the end of the line. When he had cut twelve, he would have complied with his promise to the Deacon, and would once more tramp across the mountains on the mission which had been too often thwarted. Already there were seven of these cryptic reminders, and in a few days more the eighth would be added.

Minerva came and went, and Newt at first spoke to her as little as possible; but, when the other women of the family nagged her, he rose fiercely to her defense. The girl sought by gentleness and diplomacy to win him back to open friendship, but he held sullenly aloof.

At last, she said:

"Newty, can't we be friends again? Even if you can't understand what I did, can't you believe me when I say I did it as much for you as for him?"

He stood twisting his brogan toe in the hard-tramped dirt of the cabin yard. His face was expressionless. He looked at her, and turned away his face, while over it went a spasm of pain.

"I reckons what ye did appeared right ter ye, M'nervy," he generously acceded. "I reckon I've got more quarrel with them new-fangled notions they l'arns ye down thar at ther college then what I hev with you. They aimed ter l'arn me them same things at ther penitenshery—but I wasn't ter be corrupted. But all I kin see is thet ye warned my enemy, an' thet ye made common cause with him ergin me."

On the fourth of next July, Newt was going to have a celebration all his own. In his "marked-down" enemy, Newt saw a man whom he had never injured and who had, with smug hypocrisy, attacked him in a cowardly manner and made a felon of him. In his diseased imagination he pictured Falkins gloating over this triumph. That score he meant to settle. It was simple and immutable.

Then came the day when once more the company from Troublesome hiked across the hills to Jackson. Once more the college students were drawn up at the palings to see them pass. Again they marched raggedly, but their faces, instead of being good-humored and full of frolic, were serious now. They were leaving the only country they had ever known. They were going to cross the ocean, and invade a land as foreign to their conceptions and ken as a continent on Mars.

Minerva Rawlins was leaning across the fence, and, as Newt passed her, he caught once more the flutter of her handkerchief. There was no leave-taking, and she did not know that, as he left the cabin that morning, his last words had been a warning to his mother and sister, that, if they "pestered Clem's gal" while he was away, he would hold them strictly to account on his return.

At the railroad station in Jackson, the outfit was joined by the other company; but, as Newt stood on the platform, his eyes somberly searching the space where the men were gathered, he sought vainly for the figure of Henry Falkins. At last, a corporal told him that the first lieutenant was in command, and Newt made no audible comment. But to himself he said:

"I reckon the damn' coward was skeered ter come along. He kain't fight Spain in no witness-cheer."